Biology subjects

Vassallo, R.

Publications and source records attributed to Vassallo, R..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

A modular method for rapidly prototyping targeted gas vesicle protein nanoparticles

Gas vesicles (GVs) are air-filled protein nanoparticles which are proving to be useful in a number of biomedical applications. We hypothesized that it could be possible to develop a modular method for creating rapidly prototyped GVs by modifying their surface chemistry to include targeting peptides in an orientation-specific manner. Here, we describe a modular method to create targeted GVs using His-tagged antibody fragments, ensuring that the antibody fragments are connected to the GV in an orientation-specific manner. This is achieved via the functionalization of the GVs with nickel-nitrilotriacetic acid (Ni-NTA) group. First, we validated that these functionalized GVs can bind His-tagged green fluorescent protein and characterized the particle size and surface charge of functionalized GVs. Then, GVs targeted to prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) using a minibody were validated using a knockout validation in vitro.

bioengineering↗

bioRxiv2022

Magnetic resonance imaging datasets with anatomical fiducials for quality control and registration

Tools available for reproducible, quantitative assessment of brain correspondence have been limited. We previously validated the anatomical fiducial (AFID) placement protocol for point-based assessment of image registration with millimetric (mm) accuracy. In this data descriptor, we release curated AFID placements for some of the most commonly used structural magnetic resonance imaging templates and datasets. The release of our accurate placements allows for rapid quality control of image registration, teaching neuroanatomy, and clinical applications such as disease diagnosis and surgical targeting. We release placements on individual subjects from four datasets (n = 132 subjects for a total of 15,232 fiducials) and more than 10 brain templates (4,288 fiducials), compiling over 300 human rater hours of annotation. We also validate human rater accuracy of released placements to be within 1-2 mm (using a total of 50,336 Euclidean distances), consistent with prior studies. Our data is compliant with the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS) allowing for facile incorporation into modern neuroimaging analysis pipelines. Data is accessible on GitHub (https://github.com/afids/afids-data).

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

Thymic Stromal Lymphopoietin Promotes Proliferation and Contractility of Human Pulmonary Artery Smooth Muscle

Hypoxia is a well-recognized risk factor in several pulmonary vascular diseases including pulmonary hypertension (PH). Furthermore, hypoxia-associated inflammatory changes enhance the structural and functional changes in the pulmonary artery (PA) of PH patients. Understanding the mechanisms that link hypoxia and inflammation, particularly early in disease, is key to development of novel therapeutic avenues for PH. Thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) is an \"early\" inflammatory mediator thought to be critical in diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and atopic dermatitis. TSLP has canonical effects on the immune system, but can also have non-canonical effects on resident lung cells, e.g. airway smooth muscle. Currently, the expression and role of TSLP in the PA is unknown. We hypothesized that locally-produced TSLP potentiates the effects of hypoxia in PA remodeling and contractility relevant to PH. Experiments in human PA endothelial cells (PAECs) and smooth muscle cells (PASMCs) found PAECs to be a larger source of TSLP which targets PASMCs to enhance intracellular Ca2+ responses to vasoconstrictor agonist as well as cell proliferation, acting via a number of signaling cascades including Stat3 and PI3/Akt. Hypoxia, acting via HIF1, enhanced PAEC production of TSLP, and promoted TSLP effects on PASMCs. Interestingly, TSLP per se enhance HIF1a. Overall, these novel data highlight a role for TSLP in hypoxia effects on the PA, and thus relevance for inflammation in PH.

physiology↗